On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 10:16:43AM -0600, John Goerzen wrote: > On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 10:43:01AM -0500, Glenn Maynard wrote: > > > However, this is essentially what the reciprocal patent clause is requiring. > > > As part of the Apache license, you must agree not to sue any contributor > > > for any of your software patents, for as long as you continue to use Apache. > > > > The only problem I see here is return fire: if I'm holding patents as a > > defense strategy, I want to be able to use them to return fire if an > > Apache contributor decides to attack me with his own patents, unrelated > > to Apache. > > This is only useful if you do not have a valid defense for the problem > already. In other words, it is only useful as a strong-arm tactic to let > your own company effectively ignore patents of others. After all, if the > lawsuit filed against you has no merit, you don't need a patent portfolio to > defend against it. > > So, its only real purpose is to let the patent holders thwart the patent > law. I don't like that one bit. Well, I think it's probably intended more as a technique to force the dispute out of the courts and into settlement. Maybe that's what you mean. Given the general impression of the USPTO over the past decade or so, it may be that a significant number of patents in the U.S. would be invalidated if they were ever brought to litigation. In which case, the reciprocity clause actually strengthens the existing broken patent regime by preventing bullshit software patents[1] from being litigated at all, rather than promoting the development of a "pool" of patents available to the Free Software community (or any other supposedly "benevolent" purpose). I'd sure like to know what Eben Moglen thinks about this issue. [1] This phrase may be redundant. -- G. Branden Robinson | Reality is what refuses to go away Debian GNU/Linux | when I stop believing in it. branden@debian.org | -- Philip K. Dick http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |
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